St. Augustine on Why God’s Rules (Appear To) Change

Many of the theological debates that we see in Speaker’s Corner or on the internet revolve around issues that theologians discussed centuries ago. One such issue is how God could allow acts of brutality in the Old Testament that contradict not only our own contemporary ethics, but that of the Gospels and the Quran.

In his still highly accessible text, Confessions, St. Augustine deals with this ‘contradiction’ by distinguishing between absolute and relative ethics. He says that, ‘when untrained minds’ judge Abraham, Isaac etc. ‘by man’s day’ (Corinthians 4: 3), they are making the mistake of assessing ‘the customs of the entire race by the the criterion of their own moral code’:

This is the style of those who are irate when they hear that something was allowed to the just in that age which is not granted to the just now, and that God gave one command to the former and another to the latter for reasons of a change in historical circumstances, though both ancient and modern people are bound to submit to the same justice

What we must always keep in mind is that the Old Testament is addressed to (and I mean this endearingly) savages. But relative to their neighbours, the prophets were always advancing a more progressive agenda. It is our task to distinguish between the specifics of God’s law (which is based on…